Ira Thompson Van Gieson (1866, Long Island

Long Island

Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...

 – March 24, 1913, New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

) was an American neurologist

Neurologist

A neurologist is a physician who specializes in neurology, and is trained to investigate, or diagnose and treat neurological disorders.Neurology is the medical specialty related to the human nervous system. The nervous system encompasses the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nerves. A specialist...

, psychiatrist

Psychiatrist

A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders. All psychiatrists are trained in diagnostic evaluation and in psychotherapy...

, bacteriologist and neuropathologist.

He was born in Long Island in 1866, as the son of Dr Ransford Everett Van Gieson (1836–1921). He was of Dutch-Jewish heritage.
Ira Van Gieson graduated from the College of Physicians of Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

 in 1885. In 1896, he was appointed as first director of the Pathological Institute of the New York State Hospitals for the Insane (renamed New York State Psychiatric Institute

New York State Psychiatric Institute

The New York State Psychiatric Institute, established in 1895 and located on Riverside Drive at the foot of Washington Heights, the far upper west side of Manhattan in New York City, was one of the first institutions in the United States to integrate teaching, research and therapeutic approaches to...

 in 1929). He was dismissed after five years because of political controversy involving the newly appointed president of the NY State Commission on Lunacy, Peter Wise.
As a result, the whole Institute's faculty resigned
and in 1900 a formal "Protest of the Friends of the Present Management of the N.Y. Pathological Institute" was signed (S. Weir Mitchell, James J. Putnam, Percival Bailey

Percival Bailey

Percival Sylvester Bailey was an American neuropathologist, neurosurgeon and psychiatrist who was a native of rural southern Illinois. He originally studied to became a teacher at Illinois Normal University, but transferred to the University of Chicago in 1912, where he became interested in...

,
Morton Prince

Morton Prince

Morton Henry Prince was an American physician who specialized in neurology and abnormal psychology, and was a leading force in establishing psychology as a clinical and academic discipline. He was part of a handful of men who disseminated European ideas about psychopathology, especially in...

, Frederick Peterson

Frederick Peterson (neurologist)

Frederick Peterson was an American neurologist and poet. Peterson was at the forefront of psychoanalysis in the United States, publishing one of the first articles of Freud and Jung's theories of Free Association in 1909....

, and many others). After dismissal, he returned into the service of the New York State Health Department

New York State Department of Health

The New York State Department of Health, ', is the governmental body responsible for public health in the state of New York. The cabinet-level department is headed by the Health Commissioner, a position held since January 24, 2011 by Nirav R. Shah, M.D., M.P.H.....

. He practised hypnosis and occasionally served as a forensic psychiatrist.

He died at the age of 47 at the Bellevue Hospital

Bellevue Hospital Center

Bellevue Hospital Center, most often referred to as "Bellevue", was founded on March 31, 1736 and is the oldest public hospital in the United States. Located on First Avenue in the Kips Bay neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, Bellevue is famous from many literary, film and television...

, NY, on March 24, 1913. He suffered from chronic nephritis

Nephritis

Nephritis is inflammation of the nephrons in the kidneys. The word "nephritis" was imported from Latin, which took it from Greek: νεφρίτιδα. The word comes from the Greek νεφρός - nephro- meaning "of the kidney" and -itis meaning "inflammation"....

.

His obituarist, William Alanson White

William Alanson White

William Alanson White was an American neurologist and psychiatrist.-Biography:He was born in Brooklyn, N. Y., studied at Cornell from 1885 to 1889, and two years later graduated from the Long Island College Hospital. For nine years he was an assistant physician at the Binghamton William Alanson...

, wrote:

"Dr. Van Gieson can best be described in a few words as a genius. He knew none of the rules that applied to the average man. He had a keen and incisive mind, he was alert and full of interest in everything, but he possessed that sensitive organization which made anything approaching control from outside sources utterly unsupportable. He was a spasmodic and irregular worker, when he worked, working with a fervor and depth of distraction that made him utterly forget time, food and, sleep, working for days and days without rest, way into the small hours of the morning. These periods of tremendous activity were followed by days of inactivity, during which he did nothing, and sometimes was entirely inaccessible, not even attending his office. He was, however, tremendously productive."

Van Gieson introduced the picric acid

Picric acid

Picric acid is the chemical compound formally called 2,4,6-trinitrophenol . This yellow crystalline solid is one of the most acidic phenols. Like other highly nitrated compounds such as TNT, picric acid is an explosive...

 stain (Van Gieson's stain

Van Gieson's stain

Van Gieson's Stain is a mixture of Picric Acid and Acid Fuchsin. It is the simplest method of differential staining of Collagen and other Connective Tissue...

) to neurohistology in 1889. He coined the term "psychomotor epilepsy".

He collaborated with Boris Sidis

Boris Sidis

Boris Sidis, Ph.D., M.D. was a Ukrainian Jewish psychologist, physician, psychiatrist, and philosopher of education. Sidis founded the New York State Psychopathic Institute and the Journal of Abnormal Psychology. He was the father of the child prodigy William James Sidis...

, Bernard Sachs

Bernard Sachs

Bernard Sachs was a Jewish-American neurologist. After graduating with a B.A. from Harvard in 1878, Sachs travelled to Europe and studied under some of the most prominent physicians of the time, such as Adolf Kussmaul , Friedrich Daniel von Recklinghausen , Friedrich Goltz , Rudolf Virchow...

 and others.

Works

Ira van Gieson is the sole author unless otherwise indicated

• A Resume of Recent Technical Methods for the Nervous System. Journal of Nervous & Mental Disease 14, 5, p. 310-315 (May 1887)
• A Report Of A Case Of Syringomyelia. Journal of Nervous & Mental Disease 16(7):393-411 (July 1889)
• Laboratory notes of technical methods for the nervous system. New York, 1889
• (with L. Emmett Holt) A Case Of Spina Bifida With Suppurative Spinal Meningitis And Ependymitis, Due To Bacteria Entering The Wall Of The Sac. Journal of Nervous & Mental Disease. 15(12):773-781 (December 1890)
• A Contribution To The Pathology Of The Laryngeal And Other Crises In Tabes Dorsalis. Journal of Nervous & Mental Disease. 15(7):458-474 (July 1890)
• Alternate paralysis due to multiple areas of softening in the pons varolii, extracted from the proceedings of the New York Pathological Society, 1890, in Miscellaneous Papers from the Laboratory of the Alumni Association, Department of Pathology, Columbia University, vol 1, 1890–1891, pp 1–3
• A Study of the Artefacts of the Nervous System: The Topographical Alterations of the Gray and White Matters of the Spinal Cord Caused by Autopsy Bruises, and a Consideration of Heterotopia of the Spinal Cord. D. Appleton and Co., 1892
• A report of the gross and microscopical examinations in six cases of death by strong electrical currents. New York Med J 55: 1-19 (1892)
• A contribution to the pathology of traumatic epilepsy. Medical Record 43:513-521 (1893)
• Remarks on the scope and organization of the Pathological Institute of the New York State Hospitals. State Hospitals Bulletin 1: 255–74; 407–88 (1896)
• The toxic basis of neural diseases. State Hospitals Bull I:407-488 (1896)
• (with Arnold Graf) The individuality of the cell. State Hospitals Bulletin (April, 1897)
• Epilepsy and expert testimony. Utica, 1897
• (with Boris Sidis) Neuron energy and its psychomotor manifestations. Archives of Neurology and Psychopathology 1, pp. 5–24 (1898) link
• Letter From Dr. Van Gieson. American Journal of Insanity 56: 206-207 (1899) link
• Correlation of sciences in the investigation of nervous and mental diseases. State Hospitals Press, 1899 PDF (Internet Archive
  Internet Archive
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  )
• The Formation And Excretion Of The Metaplasm Granules Of The Neuron. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 26(2): 112 (1899)
• On Some Peculiar Hollow Nuclear-Like Structures In the Neurone Bodies In Rabies. Journal of Nervous & Mental Disease. 35(3):182-183 (March 1908)